The Taipei District Court today agreed to extend the detention of Taiwan People's Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on suspicion of accepting bribes from real-estate developers during his tenure as Taipei mayor.
The court said the decision came amid fears over possible collusion in falsifying testimony that would undermine the efforts of prosecutors to investigate the case.
Photo: Chen Tsai-ling, Taipei Times
Prosecutors suspect that Ko contravened the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) by accepting bribes from real-estate developers and using his supervisory role to benefit others during his second term as Taipei mayor from 2018 to 2022.
Ko has been detained and held incommunicado since Sept. 5 before prosecutors sought to extend his detention for another two months.
A court hearing on the extension was originally scheduled for yesterday, but it was rescheduled for today due to Typhoon Kong-rey.
The prosecutors' success in extending Ko's detention came as no surprise, as the Taipei District Court earlier this week approved prosecutors' requests to extend the detention of other major suspects in the case.
They include Sheen Ching-jing (沈慶京), chairman of the Core Pacific Group, which is in charge of the controversial Core Pacific City redevelopment project, and Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇).
Prosecutors have alleged Sheen paid bribes of NT$47.4 million (US$1.48 million) to sway city government officials to abnormally increase the floor area ratio (FAR) — the amount of floor space a developer can build on a given plot of land — for a project Sheen was involved in.
Sheen was redeveloping the site formerly occupied by the Core Pacific City shopping mall in Songshan District (松山), and increasing the FAR would mean Sheen could sell more space in the project.
Ying has been believed to have acted as a go-between between Sheen and high-ranking officials, including Ko, and then-deputy Taipei mayor Pong Cheng-sheng (彭振聲), who the court has also ordered detained for the second time.
The TPP has argued the allegations against Ko are a politically motivated prosecution by the the Democratic Progressive Party government.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS